The All-New Gmail
Human Computing in the Web era! :-D
P.S. In case you don’t understand Russian: this is an Russian advertisement for Gmail by ad agency Saatchi Moscow.
Let’s say cheese!
What’s next? Maybe in the near future, our cameras will be smart enough to say something witty to make us all smile? That would be awesome. LOL.
“… Sony’s Smile Shutter™ technology prioritizes the faces of children or adults so that the camera takes the photo at the moment the intended subject smiles. “
Yahoo + Microsoft = ?
Just read a post Some Microsoft/Yahoo Overlap You May Not Have Considered by Nathan Weinberg. Several areas that I’m most interested in:
- Yahoo Search vs. Live Search: “Both are big dogs, and both are struggling to catch Google. Both will survive, at least for a while, with Microsoft trying to find a way to combine the market share of the two eventually. Most likely, the search engine will fall under the Yahoo brand, but itcould go either way.“
IMHO, Yahoo Search is much better Live Search even though the gap has been diminishing in the past two years. I see this area as one big potential winner from the M&A if the two teams combine force. Given the advantage of Yahoo’s existing search infrastructure, I agree with Nathan that it would be best to have the Yahoo guys do the search job.
- Flickr vs. Live Spaces: “Flickr will become tied to Live Spaces, with the millions of Live Spaces photos becoming part of Flickr. The two will thrive on each other and grow exponentially more successful. This will be the immediate crown jewel of the acquisition.“
Crown jewel of the acquisition. Well said and totally agree. Bottom line: I’m all for Flickr to stay independently run as it does right now. Putting a Live login on Flickr will most likely kill it.
- Yahoo ID vs. Live ID: “Yahoo’s ID system, while good, is nowhere near as powerful or versatile as Microsoft’s. Microsoft’s multi-account switching and Windows Live Sign-In assistant would win anyday. Either way, Microsoft sticks with its own technology, so Yahoo IDs are dead.“
My experience with Yahoo’s ID system is limited to the use of my Flickr account, so I cannot say much here. However it appears to me that Live ID sucks from time to time, i.e. login to Live Messenger or Live Spaces can fail for no reason.
- Yahoo Maps vs. Live Maps: “Not even a question. Microsoft loves Live Maps, and has invested heavily in it. Yahoo Maps is dead, but its engineers and some of its code may work for Live in the future.“
I agree; Live Maps rocks, even better than Google’s offering.
- Yahoo Mail vs. Live Hotmail: “Live Hotmail is one of Microsoft’s most important, strongest projects. Microsoft will avoid killing Yahoo at first, but development on Yahoo Mail will cease. Microsoft will offer Yahoo users the option to migrate their accounts to the ever-improving Hotmail, and eventually Yahoo Mail will phase out and die.“
While I have never used Yahoo Mail seriously, I had been a Hotmail user for a few years until 2004 when they stopped supporting HTTP access in Outlook. Recently I have sporadically tried out Live Mail and I think it is OK. But it still looks less attractive to me than Gmail. Tying a premium version of Live Hotmail with the business-oriented Office Live products may be the right way to go.
Direct traffic surged
No idea what has happened, but according to Flickr stats, the direct traffic to one of my recently uploaded photos has surged in the past two days from lower two digits to more than 400! Oops!
Guess someone must have blogged about it, but the stats page on Flickr doesn’t offer any referral information. Maybe I could just wait a few days and then use Google to find out about the back links.
From WM5 to WM6
Since the release of Windows Mobile 6 last February, there had been a ton of Samsung Blackjack users who were complaining about AT&T not releasing the ROM of WM6 - and I was one of them. Earlier this month, when I was attending CES ‘08, I actually talked with someone from the Microsoft Windows Mobile team regarding whether or not there would be a release, and the answer I got was a “no”.
So imagine my surprise and joy, when I learned today that AT&T has just released the ROM of WM6 for Blackjack users to upgrade their cellphones’ OS! I downloaded the ROM, hold my breath, and followed the detailed upgrade instructions - trust me, it was a fun experience to install Windows on a cellphone… Anyway, after about half an hour’s work, my Blackjack finally got a nice facelift. In addition to all the improvements over WM5 and the bundled Office Mobile, I’m also quite happy to find out that in WM6, Google Maps Mobile’s “My Location” function works, although it didn’t work at all in WM5. :)
From PBase to Flickr: Three Years Later
I recently migrated all my photos from PBase to Flickr.
“Shouldn’t you have done that long ago?” You may ask. Well, I should first say that I have been an early adopter of Flickr since mid-2004 when they were still in their beta and trying to attract new users. Back then I had this debate between hosting my photos on PBase or Flickr. For one thing, usability of Flickr was superb (even three years ago!) and super lame for PBase (even now!). However, I really liked the layout of PBase, i.e. PBase had a more photo-centric design vs. the community-centric design of Flickr. Also, at that time the annual costs for hosting on Flickr was like $49.99, almost doubling the $25-ish price tag at PBase. So, I went with PBase, even though I was quite sure Flickr would sooner or later prevail as the photo hosting and sharing website.
I have not abandoned my Flickr account completely though. In fact, I kept adding photos to it despite constraints being a free user. Over the past three years, I witnessed its purchase by Yahoo, the transition into Flickr Gamma and the much lowered hosting price, and its popularity sky-rocketed. Most of my friends to whom I once recommended Flickr have become die-hard fans, some having turned into paid pro users. Ironically, they asked me from time to time, “Hey, why are you still using PBase? It’s so old-school!”
In addition the the photo page layout differences, there were two major reasons that had me hesitated when thinking about moving out of PBase. First, I had invested time and efforts in building up a nice topical hierarchy of photo albums. Such hierarchy was once extremely hard to replicate on Flickr given its flat structure - until they rolled out a functionality to create “collections” earlier this year. Second, I just sweat at the thoughts that I would need to upload all the photos again, name them, tag them, and organize them in a nice and meaningful way, as that could be a quite tedious process!
Then you ask, “Why eventually have you decided to migrate anyway?” Essentially, I think the potential benefits will outweigh my efforts of migrating from PBase to Flickr. Once having the photos uploaded, Flickr provides convenient photo management tools, and the ability to create collections on Flickr solves the hierarchical-organization issue. I will be able to specify on a per-photo basis the desired license terms (either CC or all-rights-reserved), and photo discovery through tags makes it much easier for agencies to find my photos and make purchases. I can also upload the large original digital negatives and use Flickr as an online archive. And above all, the photography community on Flickr is just awesome to interact with.
So, enough said. I’ve taken three years to make the decision and I’m sure I’ll be happy with it.